The Will of the Empress

Chapter Five

The 29th day of Goose Moon, 1043 K.F.

The Hall of Roses, the imperial palace

Dancruan, Namorn

The next morning, Daja watched her friends as the four of them waited in an outer chamber to be announced to the empress. Sandry busied herself with a last inspection of their clothes, tugging a fold here, smoothing a pleat there — simply fussing, because the clothes adjusted themselves. When she reached for Briar's round tunic collar, he thrust her hands away. "Enough," he told Sundry firmly. "We look fine. Besides, she already saw us in our travel clothes. This fancy dress ought to be good enough."

"Things are different here," replied Sandry. "Did you see the way that footman looked down his nose at us? We're not at all fashionable here, and appearances matter more. I don't want these popinjays sneering at us."

"Well, things may be different, but we're the same," retorted Briar, preening in front of a mirror set there for just that purpose. "We're still mages, and the only folk that should concern us are mages."

Daja had to admit, he looked quite trim in his pale green tunic and trousers. Even the moving flower and vine tattoos on his hands seemed to want to match his clothes. Their leaves were the pale green of spring, the tiny blossoms white and yellow and pink, with only the occasional blue rose or black creeper. Still, he needed to remember that not everyone would agree with him. In Trader-talk she told Briar, "Don't talk nonsense. These people matter to Sandry, so they should matter to you."

Briar glared at her. When Daja returned his gaze with her own calm one, he rolled his eyes and shook his head. "They're only mattering to me for the summer, and then I'll have nothing more to do with them," he replied, also in Trader-talk. "I've had my fill of nobles."

"Unless they want to buy something from you," murmured Tris in Trader-talk.

Briar grinned like a wolf, showing all his teeth. "Unless they want to buy," he said amiably. "Then they're my new, temporary best friends."

The gilded doors to the Hall of Roses swept open, propelled by the footman who had guided them to the waiting room. He bowed low to Sandry, and indicated they could enter the room beyond.

Sandry gave him her brightest smile and swept by him, a confection of airy pink and white clothes and silver embroidery. Briar followed Sandry. Tris, respectable in a sleeveless peacock blue gown over a white undergown with full sleeves and tight cuffs, pressed a coin into the footman's hand as she passed him, accepting his murmured blessing with a nod. She had spent long hours on the road with Daja discussing the proper amounts for tips in Namorn. Daja, dressed in leader-style in a coppery brown tunic and leggings, carrying her staff, accompanied Tris into the larger hall.

"Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren," announced a herald. "Viynain Briar Moss. Viymeses Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler."

Daja, Briar, and Tris exchanged a quick grimace. Someone at court had decided to ignore the plainer titles of Ravvotki and Ravvikki they had used when they first met the empress and openly address them as mages. Reluctantly Daja reached inside her tunic and fished out the snake-like living metal string on which she kept her mage's medallion. Briar took out his, dangling from a green silk cord, and Tris hers, hung on black silk. Quickly, as they approached the empress, they arranged the medallions properly on their chests. Daja knew that Sandry wouldn't bother. Sandry understood that showing her medallion would not change how anyone saw her.

Producing their medallions had an instant effect on Sandry's companions, however. Daja felt her back straighten. She saw it happen with Briar and Tris, too. We are eighteen, after all. We're allowed to wear the medallions in public, Daja realized. And maybe having them in the open is actuaIly ... helpful. We're not Sandry's lowborn foster family, or that's not the most important thing about us. We are accredited mages from Winding Circle, which doesn't grant the medallion to just anybody. We have reputations. We are people to be reckoned with.

As they walked toward Berenene, Daja saw that the sight of medallions on the chests of Sandry's companions also had an effect on some of the other mages who were present. They were obviously not happy to see young people wearing that credential. Even Quenaill, the great mage who stood close to the empress, smiled crookedly as he bowed in greeting.

We earned it fairly and properly, thought Daja with a smile that gave away nothing of what went on behind her eyes. And if you don't play nicely with us, we'll even show you how.

To make herself forget jealous mages, she surveyed the room as if she would have to describe it in an exercise for one of her former teachers. Roses figured on wall hangings, damask chair cushions, and on the silk drapes framing long glass windows that also served as doors to the outside. Large Yanjing enamelled vases filled with fresh-cut blossoms stood everywhere, so the room was filled with their scent. Like exotic flowers themselves the elegant courtiers sat or stood in small groups, talking quietly as they watched the newcomers. Daja couldn't help but notice that a number of them were attractive men in their twenties and thirties. While the women also were attractive, they fit more of a range of ages, from some in their twenties to one in her sixties who stood just behind the empress herself. The guards along the wall were also good-looking young men, with the hard look of professional soldiers. The Traders had said gossip claimed the guard was the source of those of the empress's lovers who were not noblemen.

Daja also saw that everyone, however intense their private conversations, kept one eye on Berenene. The empress had made herself the focus of the room. She draped herself elegantly, supporting her upper body so that it curved like a swan's neck, drawing the eye from her shoulders to her tiny waist. Today she wore a dusty-rose-coloured open robe over a cream undergown. A veil of sheer, cream-tinted silk caressed her coiled and pinned hair. Dangling locks hung down around her face, hinting that she may have just come from bed.

The air is saturated with longing here, thought Daja, Watching the glances of the men, the empress's smiles, and the movement of the noblewomen's hands. It's not just the men — the women want to be her, or have her power over men. It's all for Berenene, and she wills it to be that way.

They came to a halt before the sofa. Sandry sank into a lull curtsy. Tris, with a few wobbles, followed suit. Briar and Daja bowed as deeply as they had when they first met Berenene, in respect for her power and her position.

"Oh, please, let's have none of that formal business here!" said the empress gaily. "Sandrilene, you look simply lovely. May I steal your seamstress?"

Offered the empress's hand, Sandry took it with an impish smile. "I am my own seamstress, Imperial Majesty," she said, her blue eyes dancing. "Otherwise I just fuss over other people's work and redo their seams. So much better doing it myself and having it done right."

Daja heard the quiet murmur behind them. Sandry heard it as well, because she went on to say, her voice slightly raised, "I am a stitch witch, after all."

"The reports of your skills hardly describe a humble stitch witch." The sixty-year-old woman who stood behind the empress wore a medallion of her own. Daja and the others didn't need it to mark the woman out as a mage: power blazed from her in their magical vision, power as great as that shown by any of their main teachers at Winding Circle. Despite her power as a mage and her obvious position of trust, she was dressed simply in a white undergown and a black sleeveless overgown. Apart from jet earrings and her medallion, her only ornaments were the black embroideries on the white linen of her gown.

"Viymese Ishabal, forgive me," said Berenene, though her eyes were on the four, watching their reactions. "Cousin, Viymeses, Viynain, may I present to you the chief of my court mages, Viymese Ishabal Ladyhammer. Ishabal, my dear, my cousin Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren and her foster family, Viymese Daja Kisubo of Kugiskan fame —" Daja looked down, embarrassed. She had done a few very noisy, messy things in Kugisko. Berenene's chief mage would surely know exactly what they had been, and how foolishly Daja had behaved for things to get so messy. Berenene continued: "Viymese Trisana Chandler." Tris bobbed another curtsy without taking her eyes from Ishabal. The empress smiled and added, "And Viynain Briar Moss." Her eyes caressed Briar as he bowed.

For a moment Daja considered sending the thought Now he's going to be insufferable for weeks to the other two girls, but she stopped herself. If I start, they'll want to stay in contact all the time, until they stop wanting to, and they shut me out, she told herself. No contact is better.

"It's an honour to meet you, Viymese Ladyhammer," replied Sandry with courtesy. "Your fame extends well beyond Emelan. I remember Mother talking about you."

"I told her not to go snooping in my workroom," the mage said graciously. "Your mother was always one to learn the hard way." Ishabal Ladyhammer was silver-haired, with deep-set dark eyes and a straight nose. Her mouth was elegantly curved and unpainted: In fact, she wore no makeup at all, unlike other women at court. "Your fame, too, has come to us," she said, looking at each of the four. "It will be interesting to speak with you. I know of no other mages who received their credential so young."

"It was as much to keep a leash on us as to say we could practice magic, Viymese" Briar said casually. "We're just kids still, at heart."

"That would be frightening," Ishabal replied, her voice and eyes calm. "A 'kid' such as you claim to be would not have been able to destroy the home of a noble Chammuran family in the course of a few hours' time, and without wrecking the city around it."

Briar shrugged. "I had help. And the place was old."

"Are you all so modest?" inquired Berenene.

Daja had watched the empress as the others had spoken. Those large brown eyes were busy, checking each face for a reaction. I bet she doesn't miss much, thought Daja. No more than I would, in her shoes.

To be a woman on the throne of the largest empire north of the Pebbled Sea and east of Yanjing was no easy task. Keeping control over famously hot-headed nobles seemed too much like work to Daja. Namornese nobles were notorious for their love of fighting — if not for the empire, then among themselves. Since taking the throne at the age of sixteen, Berenene had kept her nobles busy with wars and grand progresses of the empire that wrung out the purses of her subjects. Now that the empire was stalled at the Yanjing empire's Sea of Grass in the east, and the Endless Sea in the west, Berenene was probably worried about how else to keep her people occupied.

Send them to the new lands, across the Endless, Daja thought with a mental shrug. That ought to keep them busy. Let them conquer the savages over there, if they can. The explorers who report to Winding Circle have said the native peoples in the new places have their own powerful magics, rooted in their soil. Let the Namornese try to beat them, if they need something to do.

While Daja had mused, Sandry had been explaining that the four of them weren't modest, just aware of how little they actually knew. "Having a credential just means you realize how much you have yet to learn," she explained gracefully. "Really, the Initiate Council at Winding Circle gave us the medallion as much to make sure we would have to answer to them as to acknowledge we had achieved a certain amount of control over our power."

Daja's attention was caught by movement at a side door. A woman in her early twenties entered the room, bearing a large, silk-wrapped package that shimmered with magical silver cobwebs. The woman's green silk overdress and amber linen underdress were stitched to outline the ripe curves of her body. Her mouth was as richly full as her figure, her dark eyes large and long-lashed. She wore her curling brown hair loose around her shoulders, covering it with an amber gauze veil held in place with jewelled pins. When she saw that Daja was looking at her, she smiled. Her eyes were filled with so much merriment that Daja simply had to smile back. Who is she? the girl wondered. She has to be the most beautiful woman of the empress's court.

"Ah, Rizuka," said the empress, smiling brightly at the new arrival. "Is that the Yanjing emperor's gift?"

The woman came over to the sofa and curtsied elegantly, despite the package in her arms. "Imperial Majesty, it is," Rizuka answered. Her voice was light and musical. "Forgive me for taking so long to bring it, but I knew you would not need me earlier, and I had the mending to finish."

The empress laughed. "You know me too well, my dear. Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, Viymeses Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler, Viynain Briar Moss, allow me to present my Wardrobe Mistress, Bidisa Rizuka fa Dalach. Not only does Rizu ensure that my attendants and I do not go clothed in rags, but she oversees the liveries for all the palace staff."

Rizu curtsied as the four returned her greeting. Bidisa, thought Sandry. Baroness, in Emelan.

"Sandrilene, my dear, I asked Rizu to bring this for your inspection," Berenene continued graciously. "I received this gift from the emperor of Yanjing, and I am simply at a loss. Of course I must send him a gift of like value, but, to be frank, none of us have seen cloth of this sort before. I would hope you might give us your expert opinion."

"I'd be happy to, Cousin," Sandry replied. "Though how unusual can it be, that you haven't seen it before?"

Cradling the package on one arm, Rizu undid the silk tie that closed it and pushed the wrapper back. It revealed a bolt of cloth that reflected light in an array of colours, from red-violet to crimson. Daja, Tris, and Briar also drew closer to look.

They're impressed, Sandry thought. So they should be. Those threads are one colour of silk wrapped around another, leaving bits of the original colour to peek through. And those threads are twined, two shades of violet so close together that you can't call them by different names, but they still add two colours to the weave. While the embroideries — Mila bless me, but they look like they were done by ants, they're so small.

She held out her hand to touch the cloth and stopped, her palm an inch away from it. Her instincts shrieked for her to keep the silk away from her skin.

"Hmm," Sandry murmured.

Reaching through a side slit in her outer robe into one of her pockets, she found the dirty, mineral- and root-laced lump of crystal that was her night-light. Despite the materials trapped inside it, the crystal gave off a clear, steady light that made it easier to see the individual twists and turns of thread in the cloth.

Three layers, she thought, viewing the material closely. The bottom layer, crimson silk wrapped in blood-red silk. The outer layer is the two violet threads twined together. There's a cloth-of-gold thread in the outer layer, too. It shapes half the embroideries. But the second layer, that's the odd one. The smaller embroideries are tucked in there, out of sight, and the cloth doesn't want me to look at them. As if I could be stopped!

Sandry pulled a thread of her power from her inner magical core and used it to draw a circle with the index finger of her free hand just over the cloth's surface. Then she smoothed the fire until it was a round disk. She released that into the cloth.

Invisible tiny pincers, like beetle claws, sank into her magic.

Immediately she yanked free and retrieved her power. That's so shocking! she thought, distressed and angry, seeing the full shape of what had been done in this cloth. All that careful stitchery done on this, embedding the signs and making them inert. They won't even start to work until the person who wears this cloth scratches or cuts herself. Then the signs come alive to release a speck of rot here and there, until her blood's poisoned. It must have taken his mages months to do it, not to mention the time spent on just the right threads and embroideries to hold the spell. I hear there's been famine in Yanjing, and he's got his people wasting time and money on this? What kind of an emperor lets his people suffer while he sends something like this to Dancruan?!

She looked up and met her cousin's brown eyes. They flickered with mirth.

Ah, thought Sandry, returning her crystal to its pocket as she straightened. My cousin Berenene knows it's dangerous, and she's testing me. Probably Viymese Ladyhammer already told her about the magic on the cloth. That's why Berenene's Lady Rizu left the wrapping on it, and why she doesn't let the silk touch her anywhere.

"What do you think, Cousin?" the empress wanted to now. "It's so lovely, I don't want to fritter it away. I should use it for something special, but I can't think of what."

Two tests, Sandry told herself. The first to see if I would find the magic. The second to see how clever I am politically. If I tell her to send it back, she knows I'm silly enough not to know, or care, that I'd be insulting the emperor of Yanjing, who's her most powerful neighbour and sometimes enemy. The same thing is true if I tell her to destroy it, or lock it away. Besides, some poor servant might want to look at the pretty thing, and end up dying for mere curiosity. What does she think I do for Uncle, write up his party invitations?

Sandry thought fast as she tied the wrapping closed around the deadly cloth once more. "Imperial Majesty, this is loo splendid a gift to waste on anyone who can't appreciate the craft that went into it," she said at last. She smiled at Rizu before she looked at Berenene again. "We westerners lack the subtlety to appreciate the artistry in this. But do you know, I am virtually certain the Yanjing ambassador is someone of culture and wit. And he — it's a he?" Rizu and Ishabal both nodded. "I'll bet the ambassador misses Yanjing," Sandry continued. "A noble from their realm ... well, he's probably the best person in Namorn to appreciate this cloth. I am certain he would be deeply grateful if Your Imperial Majesty would grant him this piece of his homeland as a sign of affection." Sandry didn't have her old connection to her friends, but she didn't need it to feel them relax around her. They, too, had sensed that something about the cloth was very wrong.

Berenene laughed and clapped her hands as Ishabal nodded to Sandry. "Wonderful, Cousin! You have solved our dilemma most delightfully. Rizu, see it done right away." As Rizu left them with the cloth, the empress told a young man who hovered nearby, "Jak, you silly boy, stop pretending you aren't interested. Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, may I present Saghad Jakuben fer Pennun? Jak is one of my dearest young friends. He's also your neighbour, near your estates outside the town of Kilcoin."

Sandry knew she had passed the test. She smiled and extended her hand to a very attractive young man. Big, broad-shouldered, with crow's-wing black hair and bright chestnut eyes, he was delightfully handsome, with an infectious smile. He kissed her fingertips. "Hello, fair neighbour," he said in an engaging, boyish voice. "If you ever wish to borrow a cup of honey, I will be glad to oblige, though a creature as sweet as you will probably never run out."

"I know what that is," Sandry retorted, having heard variations on this theme since she had moved into her uncle Vedris's home. "That's flattery. Don't do it again, please."

Jak pouted and looked at the empress. "Great lady, you said I did flattery well."

"You did before today," Berenene told him with a catlike smile. "I fear our cousin has bowled you over and made you clumsy."

"But I can't admit to it," protested Jak. "She'll just say I'm flattering again."

Sandry giggled and retrieved her hand since Jak had yet to let go of it. "Don't admit to it," she advised. "You've almost returned to my good graces."

As if responding to an invisible signal, others moved in to be introduced, including more handsome young men who had paid attention to Jak's greeting and avoided his mistake. Everyone also greeted Daja, Briar, and Tris. Berenene watched them all with the amusement of an aunt supervising beloved nieces and nephews. When the noblemen began to argue over who would bring Sandry tea and who could fetch her a plate of delicacies to nibble on, Sundry curled her lips in a wry smile. If only Uncle could see me now, she thought. Not that he'd have much use for these pretty courtiers. When Uncle sees a strong young man idling about, he puts him to work. And only think, a week ago I was riding in the mountains, wishing I could sew my sisters' and brother's mouths shut to stop them from arguing!

As Jak brought her tea, Berenene ordered Quenaill to fetch Sandry a chair. Once Sandry took her seat with a word of thanks, Finlach fer Hurich offered her a plate of tiny dumplings, fresh strawberries, and marzipan roses. Redheaded, with a handsome face composed entirely of carved angles, he rivalled Jak for looks. As he and Jak hovered around Sandry, she noticed that they glanced frequently toward Berenene. She was about to demand that they decide who they wanted to talk to when she saw the mage Ishabal and another older woman whispering together and looking in her direction.

It hit her like fireworks: These are my cousin's choices, Sandry realized. She's picked Jak and Finlach as the ones she wants to court and marry the heiress if they can. Uncle warned me she'd try this. If I wed a Namornese nobleman, I stop taking my income to Emelan. My wealth stays here.

Sandry veiled her eyes with her lashes as she bit into an early strawberry. So the summer's game of snare-the-heiress begins, she thought cynically. It will be interesting to see how they try to do it, especially now that they know I don't care for flattery.

She sighed. I hope they're entertaining, at least. Otherwise I'm going to be very bored until it's time to go home.

*

After an hour of further mingling, Berenene proclaimed it was too fine a day to spend indoors. She invited her court and her guests outside to view her gardens. Immediately Rizu went to a pair of doubled-glass doors that opened onto a marble terrace. When she struggled with the latch, Daja went to help her.

Rizu smiled at her through the curls that had escaped her veil. "These old things are always stiff this early in the year," she said. "I told the servants to oil them yesterday, but it was a bit cold last night."

Daja reached into the latch with her power and warmed the oil in its parts. The latch turned. The doors swung outward. "You just have to know how to talk to locks," she told Rizu.

"So I see," the young woman replied, and laughed. "Obviously I need to learn a new language. My goodness ..." She looked at Daja's brass-wrapped hand. "Is that jewellery?"

"Not exactly," Daja replied. She offered the hand for Rizu's inspection and turned it over so the other woman could see the brass on her palm. As Rizu inspected her hand, Daja felt warmth start under her skin where Rizu touched her. It fizzed up into her arm, making Daja feel both odd and pleased at the same time.

"Does it hurt?" asked Rizu, awed, when she saw the metal was sealed to Daja's flesh.

Daja shook her head. "It's part of me. And it's a long story."

"I'd love to hear it," said Rizu, walking onto the terrace. "If you don't mind telling it?"

Daja smiled and tucked her hands in her tunic pockets, falling in step with Rizu as the nobles surged out into the morning sun. "Well, if you insist."

Tris drew back as the courtiers streamed outside. Let them go walk and flirt and gossip about people I don't know, she thought, meaning the nobles, not her friends. If I wanted to be bored, I'd have tried embroidery. She smiled. And Sandry would scold me for saying it's boring, she added.

The truth was that the breezes surrounding the palace at ground level drowned her in images and voices trapped in its air currents and drafts. They were the gleanings from the hundreds of people who walked and worked on the grounds. Tris could block out most of the voices, but it was harder to keep bits and pieces of pictures from assaulting her eyes, and Sandry had forbidden her to wear her coloured lenses on the day she was to be officially presented at court.

I need spectacles that block the images without looking odd, Tris told herself. Or I need to tell Sandry that I don't care how strange I look.

Or ... there are advantages to staying indoors, she thought. This is a new place. Better still, this is a new wealthy household, which means more books. I doubt the empress will even notice I'm gone, she told herself. She's so busy watching Sandry, I'll bet she has eyes for little else. I wonder where Her Imperialness keeps her library?

*

Briar drifted through the crowd of nobles, getting to know who was who, particularly among the women. He didn't go all out with any one female, not today. You've got all summer to spend in this human garden, he told himself, when the urge to single out a particular beauty caught him up. And some of these flowers are well worth the effort to cultivate. You don't want to race around clipping them like a greedy robber.

A few male mages drifted his way to get acquainted. They accompanied their greetings with a subtle pressure to see if Briar was weak or unprepared, a magical touch like a too-strong handshake. It was a popular game with insecure mages, particularly men, and Briar withstood it without pressing back. He ended the conversation and moved away from the pressure as soon as was polite. Why do they waste their time like this? Briar wondered for perhaps the thousandth time since he had begun his mage studies. They aren't competing with me, or me with them, so why bother? None of my teachers ever tried that nonsense.

"Stop that," he finally told the last mage crossly. "I'm not going to yelp like a puppy and I'm not knocking you over, either. Stop wasting my time and yours. Grow up."

Quenaill was within earshot. He came over, waving off the man who had begun to turn red over Briar's remarks. "You'd better hope Her Imperial Majesty doesn't catch you at such tricks with her guests, particularly not with a garden mage," he advised the nobleman. As the older mage left, Quenaill smiled quizzically down at Briar. He was a hand taller, the tallest man at court. "You think it's a waste of time?" Quenaill asked. "Not a way to gauge the potential threat of a stranger?"

Briar dug his hands into his trouser pockets. "Why?" he asked reasonably. "I'd be an awful bleat-brain to try anything here, where even the pathways are shaped for protection."

"You don't want others to respect you?" asked Quenaill. He had the look in his eye of a man who has stumbled across some strange new breed of animal.

"What do I care if they respect me or no?" asked Briar. "If I want them to learn that, I won't use a silly game to teach it. I save my power for business."

"Well, my business is the protection of Her Imperial Majesty," Quenaill reminded him.

"And mine isn't anything that might mean her harm," Briar replied. "You obviously know that already. I'm a nice safe little green mage, all bestrewn with flowers and weeds and things."

Quenaill covered the beginnings of a smile with his hand. When he lowered it, his mouth under control again, he said, "Little plant-strewn green mages aren't safe, not when they wear a medallion at eighteen. I was considered a prodigy, and I was twenty-one when I got mine."

Briar shrugged. "That's hardly my fault. Maybe your teachers held off because they were worried about you respecting them — and maybe mine already knew I respected them for anything that truly mattered."

Quenaill began to chuckle. Once he caught his breath, he told Briar, "All right. I give up. You win — such tests of power are pointless in the real world. But if you think any of these wolves won't try to show how much better than you they are, in magic or in combat, you're in for a rude awakening."

Briar brushed off the idea as if it were a fly. "Just because they want to dance doesn't mean I'll do the steps, he replied. He and Quenaill fell into step together as the court wandered down into the park that surrounded the palace. "So where did you study?" he asked as they followed the lords and ladies.

They had a decent chat before one of the ladies claimed Quenaill's attention. Briar wandered on by himself, inspecting the wealth of plants that ornamented the paths. The sight of a pool drew him down to the water's edge to see the green lily leaves that covered its surface. Buds stood up from the water on long stems, still too tightly furled to betray the colour of the blossoms within.

He heard the rustle of silk behind him. Without looking around, Briar muttered, "Aliput lilies! How did she get Aliput lilies to grow so far north?" He let his power wash away from him, over the pond's surface, but he detected only the tiniest whispers of magic in the edges and along the bottom, in charms to keep away rot and insects.

"It wasn't easy," Berenene replied, amused. Briar turned his head; she stood just a foot from him, with the court spread behind her like a gaudy cape. "I shelter them in the greenhouses all winter, in pools with just enough warmth to keep them alive. I have to do that for all the temperate land plants. They don't last ten minutes in one good blast from the Syth in November. The first year I was empress, I lost a fortune in water lilies because I left them out in October." She sighed, a rueful curl to her slender mouth. "My father forbade me to import any plants whatsoever. He told me he would not waste good Namornese coin on garden frippery. That first year I was empress, I feared he was right, and that it was a fool's idea to spend all that money for something that went black with frost burn instantly and never recovered."

Briar looked up into her large brown eyes, interested. This was a side to her that he had not expected. True, the imperial gardens were one of the wonders of Namorn, but he thought that was the work of imperial gardeners. He had no idea that the empress herself took an interest beyond having the fame of them. "But you tried again," he said.

"By then I'd had three assassination attempts on my life, and a peasant rising that took five thousand troops to put down," she said, staring into the distance. "I thought that if running the empire was going to be so treacherous, I owed myself something to remind me that there was some good in being empress." She smiled at him. "I have papyrus plants growing in the next pond," she said. "Would you like to see?"

Briar hurriedly got to his feet. "I'm your man, Imperial Majesty."

She looked at him. "Are you indeed?" she asked with an impish smile. "Then you may offer me your arm." Briar did so with his most elegant bow. She rested a white hand accented with rings on his forearm and pointed to one of the paths. "That way."

The courtiers parted before them as they climbed to the next path, then fell into place behind. Briar looked at his companion, still trying to puzzle out how he felt about the discovery that this powerful woman liked plants. "So do you oversee all these gardens, Imperial Majesty?" he inquired.

Berenene put her head back and laughed. Briar's eyes travelled along the line her lovely throat made. They should do statues of her as Mila of the Grain, he thought. Or the local earth goddess, Qunoc. I'm surprised all these lovesick puppy courtiers haven't put them up all over the country. He glanced back. The lovesick puppies glared at him.

"I would not have the time to oversee each and every garden here, let alone at my different homes," Berenene told Briar. "And so many of them are displays of imperial power. They're impersonal. But I do have spots that are all mine, with gardeners I trust if my duties keep me away, and I have my greenhouses. There's always time in the winter to get my hands dirty. Here we go."

They walked out of the shelter of the trees into bright sunlight, an open part of the grounds that would draw sun all day long. Here stretched the long pond bordered by tall papyruses. It was bordered by a wooden walkway. Berenene led Briar up onto it. "I hate to lose good shoes in the mud," she explained, "and we have to keep the edges boggy for the reeds. Do you know what those are?" She pointed through a break in the greenery at the pond's edge.

Briar whistled. "Pygmy water lilies," he said, recognizing the small white blossoms among the spreading leaves. "Nice."

"I tried to crossbreed them," the empress said, leaning her elbows on the rail that overlooked the pond. "I wanted a red variety. I've had no luck, so far. But you might."

"It would take longer than I plan to stay," Briar told her, watching a father duck patrol the water near a stand of reeds. I'll bet he's got a lady friend with eggs hidden there, he thought. To the likes of him this expensive little stretch of water is just a nesting-place.

"It's a pity," replied Berenene. "I think between us we would create gardens the whole world might envy. But if your mind is settled, I would not try to change it."

A glint of light on the far side of the long pond caught Briar's eye. "Imperial Majesty, I think you might change any fellow's mind, if you chose to," he said gallantly, but absently. "What's over there?"

"My greenhouses. Would you care to see them? Or would you think I was trying to tantalize you?" Berenene inquired wickedly.

Briar looked into her eyes and swallowed hard. If Rosethorn was here, she'd say this was way too much woman for me, he thought. And maybe she'd even be right.

Berenene gave him a long, slow smile. "Come." She took his arm once more as they set off down the wooden walkway. The hammer of many shoes on the planks made the empress turn and scowl. "You all have my leave to remain here," she said sharply. "We're going to the greenhouses, and you know I can't let any of you in." To Briar, she said, "The last time I went there with three — three, mind! — of my courtiers, one of them knocked over a palm and one broke a shelf of clay pots. They're all grace on the dance floor or battlefield, but not in a greenhouse."

Briar looked back, met the smouldering eyes of a number of young nobles, and grinned.

* * *